by Marianna Brogna, junior literary editor
After the shooting in San Bernardino, the government got its hands on one of the terrorist’s iPhones. In attempts to pursue the one who is responsible, the government urged Apple to crack the iPhone, but Apple refused.
When set to duke it out in court on Tuesday, March 22nd, the FBI asked for a postponement. They had discovered a way to crack the iPhone 5C without Apple’s assistance. They had the help of an Israeli mobile software developer, Cellebrite.
“Now I’m going to get technical, the way that Apple has developed their iOS security system prevents the encrypted data stored on the phone from being accessed by Apple themselves, to guarantee absolute privacy, security, and safety from Apple, as well as organizations of the government, competition, and organizations of anonymous origin,” tech crew member Jonathan Baffo said.
“Now let’s say the Apple engineers are able to break through this wall of security that they’ve built around this terrorist’s phone, which they almost certainly are capable of doing, they would then be completely undoing all of their hard work and diminishing Apple’s moral code of security. Apple allowed the government access into all of their iPhones, not only does that bear all of the effects that I just listed, but it means the end to your rights of privacy as an American citizen, no matter what the government ‘promises’ to the people about only using this unbelievable power ‘just once’. They are going to use it again and again for whatever reasons they deem plausible,” Baffo continued.
“The FBI denies all accusations that imply they were trying to create a backdoor and use it as means of national security. All of that is bulls*** of course, but this is really scary for people that are skeptical about data security and privacy, myself included, we think that a global digital security crisis is approaching, and it may not exactly be a crisis but the way we secure data needs to change soon because no system is no longer truly safe from attack,” Baffo said.
Upon cracking this iPhone, it could compromise the privacy of iPhone users, should it fall into the wrong hands. This is Apple had been very hesitant to crack the iPhone in the first place, but the third party has come forward with an alternative.
